Manhattan Community Board 5 made its resolve clear on Thursday night: they want Madison Square Garden relocated to make way for a new Penn Station.
The board’s vote came in response to MSG’s application for a permit allowing the stadium to operate at its location above the crowded transit hub in perpetuity. The board nixed this plan, instead resolving to give the arena three years to relocate.
The vote is advisory, and will now go before the City Planning Commission and City Council before the permit expires July 24.
Though the process is technically a referendum on an operating permit, which was most recently renewed with a 10-year extension in 2013, the board and many members of the public focused their deliberations on the future of Penn Station, one of the busiest rail hubs in the world now buried underneath the arena.
“The issue with Madison Square Garden here is that it is really a true impediment to Penn Station,” said Layla-Law Gisiko, chair of the board’s Land Use, Housing and Zoning Committee, who spearheaded the resolution on the matter.
In a statement on the vote, the MSG leadership doubled down on their intention to stay put.
“The special permit process is not about whether Madison Square Garden should move, and we have no plans to do so,” said an MSG spokesperson
But in the course of the board’s first public hearing on the permit in February, an MSG executive said that the venue could be open to moving across Seventh Avenue, although neither the city, the MTA, Amtrak nor other stakeholders had proposed such a move and it would require around $8.6 billion in public funding.
The board honed in on this figure, comparing it to the cost of the proposed project to upgrade the station in its location below MSG for $7 billion and a separate project to build an extension of the station to the south for $12 billion.
“It is really important to understand that this $8.6 billion includes moving MSG and reconstructing Penn. So it’s both for $8.6. You get the full package,” said Layla-Law Gisiko in the meeting. “Those are pretty crude numbers, but just based on this back-of-the-envelope calculation, there is actually an economic rationale to move Madison Square Garden,” she added later.
Throughout the course of the board’s three committee meetings and hearings on the application, many New Yorkers who took the time to testify that the city should prioritize improvements to Penn Station over keeping the venue in its current place.
“The renewal should only be granted if the Garden’s ownership presents a viable relocation plan,” said Pamela Wolff of Save Chelsea.
Beyond its focus on the area’s transportation infrastructure, the community board did take issue with the practical merits of the MSG’s application. The venue’s continued presence “will overburden” public space outside, its proposed improvements are “underwhelming” and its loading zones interfere with pedestrian and street traffic, the board’s resolution reads.
The application will now proceed to Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine for his input before going to the City Planning Commission, which has the power to revise the venue’s special permit.
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